Nathan Fleeger Architecture Portfolio

NATHAN FLEEGER

nathan.fleeger@gmail.com

614-499-9497

Education

The Ohio State University

Bachelor of Science in Architecture

Graduated Cum Laude

Master of Architecture

Experience

Berardi + Partners

Columbus, OH

May 2021

Expected: May 2023

Columbus, OH

Architectural Intern February 2022 - Present

Illustration and modeling in Revit Experience working under various PMs Understand different phases of design process Experience with product salesmen/developers

The Ohio State University

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Teach undergraduate lab sections Coordinate material with professors Deep understanding of coursework Knowlton School architecture curriculum

Professional Design Services, LLC

Draftsman

Specialized in custom home design Experience in site measurement Significant illustration in Softplan Involved in client interactions/design process

*References available upon request*

Columbus, OH

August 2021 - Present

Columbus, OH

December 2018 - August 2021

Activities

American Institute of Architecture Students

Member

National Member

Valuable skill training for the architecture field

Skills & Awards Programs

Adobe Suite

Revit

Microsoft Office Suite Rhinoceros 3D

Softplan

Awards

August 2018 - Present

Fall 2020 Studio Award

GUI Competition Finalist

Spring 2022 Studio Award

Featured in Banvard Gallery

HOTEL AND "UNCONVENTION" CENTER

For this group project with Kristoffer Roxas and Evan Robledo, the task was to design a hotel in downtown Chicago that contained a special program of our choice. Our design focuses on redundant vertical circulation. By introducing this redundancy in vertical circulation cores, which are contained within individual piers, a field condition is created. This field condition in turn creates a boundary in which program can be inlaid, producing a series of programmed masses that have the capacity to operate either collectively or independently.

As the piers begin to shear and rotate, the field condition as it is experienced at different floor heights begins to change, as does the resulting program boundary. The field condition is populated vertically with modules that also have the capacity to operate either collectively or independently. The modules encourage a co-living model by including communal spaces consisting of a kitchen, living room, and study room. The modules also come in a variety of sizes to accommodate different styles of hotel living. The organization of these modules is contingent upon the boundaries created by the piers, producing a variety of experiential differences where the modules begin, end, and meet.

The placement of the modules begins to express the program they contain. Modules that face outward contain hotel rooms, while modules that face inward, having less access to light, contain program less reliant on natural light, such as our convention center. Finally, the arrangement of piers within the field condition allows for varying degrees of access to different programs within the hotel. Visitors access their desired program by using specific piers that take them where they need to go using their smart phone. Because of this, there is no traditional hotel lobby –instead, the massing created by the modules is lifted above ground level, leaving only the piers where they meet the ground. This frees up the ground level to be used as public space, which might include food trucks, pop up markets, or other community events, while also revealing the organization of the field condition.

WET MARKET

Spring Studio - 2022

Sea level rise threatens coastal towns more than any other. Rising waters threaten entire communities, as seen in Corozal, Belize. The town, which is located on the Mexico-Belize border, is home to locals, a popular location for retirees, and attraction for tourists and merchants to its duty-free (tax free) zone. My partner Michael Rizzo and I aimed to address all these factors through the design of an indoor/outdoor hybrid market with mixed-use housing.

There is a focus on the concept of the border, which is blurred at the site scale, as country lines and waterlines intermingle. The border of personal space is explored at the building level through various forms of partial enclosure screen wall and louver systems. As the water rises, the primary ground becomes lost, and the public program moves upwards to elevated plane. Through this architecture, we wanted humans to have opportunities to interface with water and with each other in new ways.

VITRA WAREHOUSE/SHOWROOM

For this studio project, the goal was to design a showroom-warehouse hybrid building meant to sit on the Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The main focus of the design was the balance between storage space and display space. This project examines this relationship by making the display space hidden from the outside while also making the storage space completely visible to anyone outside of the structure. This makes the storage space a pseudodisplay space and subverts the expectations of storage and display.

Spring Studio - 2019

In this project, the storage space is blue and the display space is green, with slippages of space occurring throughout the project, allowing the spaces to bleed into one another. The form is a floating box that is pierced by three piers. These piers house all the necessary circulation and program such as elevators, emergency exits, and bathrooms. One pier is made of glass and houses display spaces, and because of its transparency, occupants of the display space can view but not reach the storage space, and vice versa.

The storage space is clearly organized by rows of shelves, a grid of columns, and orthogonal pathways, while the display space is more random, with columns dropping out and sporadic skylight cuts creating large voids in the floor. This prompts a more unorthodox circulation and further contrasts the two spaces. Finally, the striping graphic that is on the walls and pathways further enforces the difference in spaces. Below, the storage space is glazed in stripes visible from the outside, while the display space is fully striped on the inside, and is not visible from the exterior of the building. The striping serves as circulation guides on both floors and was taken from an earlier pavilion concept.

PAVILION

For this studio project, our goal was to create a pavilion starting from 3 object containers. After choosing an object, we had to create 3 separate containers based on the concepts of storage, reveal, and display. We then took a drawing of our chosen object and projected it onto the containers, and picked one to transform into a pavilion.

Spring Studio - 2019

This pavilion was designed based off of a storage container for a bell. The initial container was a prismatic form derived from triangles, with graphically abstracted bells projected onto it. The graphics, being stripes and dots, actually effect the geometry of the form, and the interior becomes juxtaposed from the exterior due to the immediate change in color. This rule is broken only once where the stripes cut through the geometry and the pink color bleeds through, creating a blurring of interior and exterior space.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Fall Studio - 2020

For this completely digital studio project, my partner Trey Marshall and I, designed a building for the Columbus Historical Society that would house the statue of Christopher Columbus that used to be prominently displayed outside city hall. The site was divided into two halves; the front half being the main building geode, and the back half consisting of our garden courtyard and elevated walkways. These two halves represent yin & yang, future & past, with the threshold acting as present time, through which you see glimpses of both past and future.

The chamfer of the corner on Broad St. invites the existing procession into the building while holding the corners that reference both the historic Engine House to the East, and the Harrison House to the West. The cut on the western edge of our building references the existing curb cut along N. Gift St, which allows for accessible storage for past and future gallery exhibits. This cut also opens another opportunity for secondary entry into our building, wrapping around the auditorium, feeding you towards the main lobby. The procession continues to be a driving force on the interior of our project through the ramp, which as a result informs our program layout.

Both the exhibition and auditorium spaces are sunken into the ground, allowing for Columbus to be submerged. This leaves us not looking up at him, not looking down on him, but simply staring him in the face. On the first floor, both entrances lead you to the front desk, which visually directs you either to the auditorium, or to the main gallery. Through the main gallery, you approach the openings in the building envelope which function as present time, creating views towards the future. On the second floor, you have a direct view of the existing tree, and second floor gallery space. Up the ramp a half level you reach our reading room and lounge spaces, accessible for public use. On the Third floor, you reach the archive space, which has a glass wall to give glimpses into the galleries and Columbus below. Up to the top of the ramp is the administrative office space, the final destination for the employees.

Our courtyard space on the back half of the site displays both familiar, and unfamiliar figures. The familiar figures, potentially discarded from other locations, are displayed below in a zen garden, untouchable to the public. The unfamiliar figures are housed above on the elevated walkway, on display and easily accessible from the third floor. The vision of the unfamiliar figures look beyond the frosted glass in front of them, and down onto the familiar figures displayed below. This is a denial of the common binary thinking of historical figures; limiting your vision to figures above, as if you were part of this history yourself.

SPIDER CHAIR

Spring Graphics - 2019

For this assignment, we were instructed to take 30 images of an ordinary chair from different angles. Our photographs were then stitched together to create 3 joiners. These joiners were abstracted, dream-like versions of the chairs we originally photographed, and we then had to create drawings and models based off of the joiner we chose.

This chair is titled Spider Chair due to the spider like qualities of the legs that were created in the joiner. The seams in the chair were formed by the edges of the physical images and they are marked by changes in pattern. The chair retains the general qualities that any chair would have, and by simply looking at it, it is identifiable as a chair, however, the abstracted form defines a new language for the piece that makes something simple like a chair into something far more exciting.

URBAN HOUSING

GUI Competition - Spring 2020

For the GUI Competiton, the goal was to create urban housing in Toronto. This project was a finalist for the competition.

It is based on duality, and the idea of two juxtaposing forces interacting while pulling the urban fabric upward. This can lead both to moments of harmony, and moments of tension. The structure is organized into 8 vertical neighborhoods, with commercial and communal spaces throughout. The outer envelope forces units to mutate and change while the interior units remain unchanged in a rigid pattern.

A 10' square box creates a hexagonal pattern that can be prefabricated en masse, and this pattern then continues to form vertical neighborhoods, or pods, that start to pull the urban fabric upwards instead of sideways. Units tessellate out, holding a rigid orthogonal pattern that creates hallways, vertical circulation, and a large interior courtyard. In this courtyard are scattered solids, base modules of the pattern they hold. Fighting against this, however, are large circles of trees intersecting and seeming to float outside of any larger pattern. The pattern of the units as a rigid datum that creates the stackable, repeatable structure of the building. The curved envelope, however, is like an echo of the pattern, with the bulges roughly corresponding to the real protrusions occurring underneath. It’s curvilinear form serves as a juxtaposition from the interior courtyard’s rigid square.

These unit axons are just a couple examples of the configurations a unit may have. They are simple, orthogonal units that keep to the pattern, but something special happens when the curve meets a unit on the exterior. These units are unique alterations created from the curve meeting the unit. When the curve completely falls outside of the unit, the unit mutates and extends to meet it, but when the curve cuts through a unit, every wall past the cut becomes glazed. This creates almost 100 completely unique units around the building’s exterior. This exterior space is incredibly versatile and allows for the use of otherwise unused space on the roof plane, and expands the recreational space of the courtyard vertically, harmonizing with the way the commercial spaces start to pull the urban fabric upward.

TANGRAM TOWER

Spring Studio - 2020

For this studio project, our objective was to design a coworking tower. My partner Maverick Ordoñez and I were assigned a plot of land on the corner of Broad St. and Grant St. in downtown Columbus Ohio. The design process was completely digital, and our class worked remotely from home. Our tower was based around the idea of the tangram.

The grid created by the floor system and the column system was overlayed with exterior crossbeams. The programatic spaces were then formed from the resultant pattern on the facade. These tangram shapes protrude off of the facades in all four directions, overhanging the plaza below. This system also neatly divides the program into their own customized space, which allows for a clear destination for those moving through the tower. The ground floor is an open air plaza, with an elevator that takes the user up into the building. Parking is underground, and the rooftop acts as an open air restaurant that provides a view of the downtown skyline.